


Long Live the King

by devilinthedetails



Category: PIERCE Tamora - Works, Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Death, Duty, Family, Father and Son, Friendship, Gen, Grief, Knight and Squire - Freeform, Loss, Mourning, Politics, legacy, soul
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-01
Updated: 2018-06-01
Packaged: 2019-05-17 01:53:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14822973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devilinthedetails/pseuds/devilinthedetails
Summary: Zahir confronts the death of his king.





	Long Live the King

Long Live the King

Zahir ran his mare as fast as the wind as if he could outrace the death of a king that haunted his heels or as if the pounding of Sabah’s hooves against the packed dirt road could beat the memory of kneeling before the waning man who had been knightmaster and Voice to him. 

Tears pricked like arrows at his eyes, and he blamed them on the dust Sabah raised from the bone dry road rather than the memory of how he had knelt, useless as a dull sword to protect his liege and nothing could be more galling to a King’s Champion than that hopeless impotency, by King Jonathan’s bedside. 

There had been a time when it filled Zahir’s mouth with burning bile to kneel before the northern king, grandson of a vicious conqueror, but when he knelt before King Jonathan for what he knew would be the last time, it had felt not as if he were humiliating himself with an act of homage to a northern oppressor but as if he were offering respect and comfort to a man who had mentored him for so many years. 

( “Zahir.” King Jonathan’s voice could only emerge as a rasp from one side of his lips as a stroke had frozen half of his face beyond the thawing of any healer, and his hand trembled as he slipped a scroll into Zahir’s hand, which shook in sympathy. “You’re my best swordsman and quickest rider. You must give this to Roald. It contains my blessing and advice which I will entrust to no other.” 

“You can give it to him yourself, Your Majesty.” Zahir was aware that the Crown Prince was traveling with a small retinue as hastily as horses would permit from the southern district where he was governor to his failing father’s bedside. “He’ll be here soon.” 

“Not soon enough for me.” King Jonathan gave a grim, lopsided grin. “I’ve foreseen it.” 

Zahir’s stomach sank with the epiphany that, since each Voice was granted a vision of their death at the moment of their becoming Voice, the king must have foreseen that both Zahir and Roald wouldn’t be present for his last breath. Still, Zahir refused to accept fate without argument. 

“Then send someone else in my place,” he pleaded, squeezing King Jonathan’s fingers, which were cold as icicles. 

“After all these years, you still won’t obey me.” King Jonathan looked so frail folded into his pillows and blankets that Zahir couldn’t challenge him any longer. “Just this once can’t you follow my command without questioning?” 

“I will obey.” Zahir bowed his head and blinked the moisture out of his clouded gaze. He wouldn’t show weakness to distress a dying man further. “I just don’t want to leave your side, sire.” 

“You’re loyal and brave, Zahir ibn Alhaz.” The king’s palms rested over Zahir’s hair in a benediction that left Zahir breathless as death. “I’ll be with you always. May all the gods grant you speed and safety on your journeys now and forever.” ) 

The memory of King Jonathan’s blessing—given almost as if Zahir were a son—spurred him on, and the king’s promise echoed in his ears like the peal of a funeral bell when a bond he had once spurned but now welcomed opened between him and the man who had once been Voice. A wash of warm assurance—-of boundless love and pride for him and for Roald—washed over him like a bath to remove sweat after a day’s hard toil. He relaxed into his jolting saddle and allowed himself to be swept into its gentle yet overwhelming currents. In its embrace, he could feel the king draw a rattling breath, release it, and then go still. When the king went still, the connection between him and Zahir faded like morning dew but left Zahir with the whispered memory of love. 

He didn’t doubt that he had felt King Jonathan’s soul departing its body, nor did he doubt that the king had wanted him to feel the life ebb from him. He understood instinctively that the king had craved his presence at the end as surely as he knew that King Jonathan had loved and favored him beyond what his feeble merits might justify. 

Devastated by his loss and determined to unburden himself of his terrible news so at least he wouldn’t be alone in his sorrow, he pressed on ever faster. At last, he met Roald’s company, heralded by its own swirling storm of dust, on the road. 

“Sir Zahir.” Roald slowed his midnight black stallion and nodded at Zahir as if he could sense that Zahir had an urgent message that would forever divide his life, cutting his present from his future. “Well met. Did my father send you to me?” 

“He sent me to give you this.” Zahir withdrew the scroll that contained King Jonathan’s final blessing and guidance for the heir to the kingdom from a leather pouch affixed to his belt. He handed it to Roald, and then, his mouth coated with the road’s choking dust, dismounted and fell on his knees before the man who would now rule the realm. “The king is dead! Long live the king!” 

“The king is dead. Long live the king!” Roald’s companions climbed down from their steeds and took up Zahir’s shout. 

The words rang hollow as a tuneless instrument in Zahir’s ears. To the northerners, Zahir knew that the cry was an expression of hope in a seamless succession from one monarch to the next, but to Zahir, a Bazhir ever rooted in the past, it was only an aching reminder of everything he had loved and lost. 

“May the Black God grant eternal peace to his soul.” Roald looked shaken as a leaf in a gale but his voice didn’t quake as he offered the traditional blessing for the departed. Continuing because it was expected at this juncture that he would say something to encapsulate his vision for his reign, Roald went on as proper as he had been since they were pages ago when death was still unimaginable to Zahir, “We will seek justice, bestow mercy, and serve each other and all the gods in humility and faithfulness.” 

It might not have been as inspirational a speech as King Jonathan would have given—Roald, Zahir wasn’t alone in thinking, had never possessed his father’s charisma—but it was inoffensive, determined in an understated fashion, and blended traditional values with a subtly progressive slant. It promoted harmony, fairness, and duty above all. In that way, Zahir supposed it would be a prediction of Roald’s ruling style. 

When Roald waved them to their feet, Zahir rose from the road with everyone else, dust painting his knees. Once everybody was standing, Roald requested, “A private word with Sir Zahir, please.” 

Zahir felt his tongue tying as Roald’s retinue drifted out of earshot. When they were alone, Roald spoke softly, “My condolences, Sir Zahir. I know you were close to my father and that he loved you.” 

Zahir should have responded with his own condolences or his possibly presumptuous assurance that King Jonathan had loved Roald more than words could have expressed at the end, but instead he could only answer, thick as heat in the desert, “I loved him too.” 

“You were his champion.” Roald shot Zahir a considering glance that reminded Zahir so much of his father that he felt his chest tighten in grief. “Would you do me the honor of protecting me as you did him?” 

There was something charming in Roald’s stilted, stiff formality, Zahir decided as he bowed. “It would be my duty and my pleasure.” 

“Thank you.” Roald nodded his appreciation and added after a moment’s hesitation, “That was my first question for you. My second is more tactless and I will understand if you choose not to reply, but did my father mention me to you before you parted?” 

“He spoke strongly of how I needed to give you the letter with his blessing and his advice. You were all he thought about at the end, I believe.” Zahir had seen that King Jonathan had taken comfort in the presence of his beloved wife, Liam, Jasson, Lianne, and Vania as well as the friends clustered around his bedside even as he had longed for Kalasin in faraway Carthak but it was his heir he had focused on as his legacy and the future of the country. 

“I’m sure I wasn’t all he thought of because he must have thought of the realm above all.” Roald’s comment could have emerged from Zahir’s musings. 

“You are the realm,” pointed out Zahir quietly, bowing again. 

“I am not.” The wry edge to Roald’s words made Zahir wonder how much of King Jonathan’s spirit had survived in Roald and in himself. Maybe that was what King Jonathan had meant when he promised Zahir that he would be with him always. “The realm is far larger than me, Sir Zahir, and it will endure long after I’m gone.”


End file.
